


The Only Time We Know

by lastwingedthing



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: M/M, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-10
Updated: 2010-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-13 14:37:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/138449
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lastwingedthing/pseuds/lastwingedthing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Brad's a cold-blooded killer, dawg. No, <i>really</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Only Time We Know

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much to clavicular and schlicky for the beta! <3

Brad comes round to see him one morning in the second week of their leave. Ray’s spent the obligatory week back in Missouri, smiled and said ma’am to old ladies, eaten himself into a carbohydrate coma. Now, back in California, it’s his old buddy Jeff’s couch and bars with the boys every night. Most days he sleeps til noon.

Brad’s hair is still damp, feet bare and sandy. He’s probably been surfing since dawn, he’s cold enough for it. Even after the drive over here through the baking summer heat his skin is icy as the ocean. In the daytime Brad wraps himself up in jeans and long shirts, insulating himself against the heat. He can stand the sun. But he doesn’t have to like it.

“The fuck do you want,” Ray says to him crossly, rubbing his eyes and trying not to smile, tugging Brad inside. Brad grins and goes with it, wraps his hand around Ray’s hip and gets Ray up against the door. Ray presses himself close against Brad’s cold skin. They kiss for a while.

It’s soft and lazy, slow. Eventually Ray sighs and pulls his mouth away, turning his head just a little.

“Hungry?” he mumbles softly, languid.

Brad’s breathing slow and heavy through his mouth, his cheeks are flushed. “Yeah,” he breathes out thickly. Ray closes his eyes, offers up his neck.

Brad bites.

He doesn’t take much, barely a mouthful. It’s enough to have Ray trembling and bucking up, fingers digging half-moon marks into Brad’s shoulders. He’s barely aware of the hoarse desperate noises he’s making. The pleasure is all-encompassing, enough to drown in.

When Brad’s finished sucking he licks Ray clean of every last smear of blood, tongue almost too much stimulation against his neck. Ray can’t stop the noises he’s making, the little broken moans.

“Mmm,” Brad says finally, low and rumbling in his throat. “Tastes like skinny meth-addled hick.”

Ray huffs out a laugh. “Yeah, you missed me.”

He can feel Brad’s smile against his skin, feel teeth.

After a minute Brad’s hand dips between his legs, strokes over the line of his cock through his jeans just once.

“You want to come?”

Ray pushes against Brad’s hand, testing. “Maybe,” he says, then all at once swears as Brad’s tongue flicks over the tiny wound again, as Brad closes his mouth and _sucks_. “Ah God,” he says in a rush, bucking upwards. “Cocksucking goatfucking _bastard_ , yeah.”

Brad unzips Ray’s jeans with a speed verging on inhuman, shoves them down and gets his hand inside to stroke. Ray’s hands are clenched tight around Brad’s back.

“Fuck you, c’mon, gimme your mouth, c’mon…”

Ray can’t see, but he knows Brad’s smiling. He gets down on his knees slowly, fluid motions. He doesn’t move like a human, and Ray ought to be scared.

He isn’t feeling anything but desperation.

Brad is so good at this. Wetness and suction are all Ray can feel as his cock slides deep into Brad’s throat, all he can think about. Brad’s body is still icy cold, warming against Ray’s skin; the temperature is a shock and a tease all at once.

And Recon Marines might be able to hold their breath for four minutes, but Brad doesn't need to breathe at all.

Ray feels his balls drawing up, sweat prickling across his skin. He’s so close, he wants this so badly.

Brad looks up at him, blue eyes through lowered lashes, mouth red and wet and stretched into a smile around Ray’s cock. And Ray comes, muffling his cries with a fist against his mouth.

“Christ,” he manages after a minute, slumping back against the wall. Brad is still resting on his knees in front of him, eyes closed, breathing in Ray’s scent.

Brad’s mouth quirks up. “Is that all it takes to break you? You’re quite the little pussy, Person.” No amount of dismissiveness can hide the warmth in his tone, his calloused fingers stroking with just the right amount of pressure up Ray’s thigh, inching teasingly behind his balls.

Ray rolls his eyes. “You fucking wish, homes. Come on, get up here and get your monstrous cock in me already. Just you fucking _try_ and make me scream.”

Brad ducks his head to hide the smile.

Later that night Brad will take Ray back to his house and feed from him again, just a few sips. Bite him and fuck him and bite him again, until Ray is sobbing and oversensitised, lost in the pleasure. Orgasm will spill out of him like an afterthought. He’ll sleep like that, pressed close against Brad, until Brad’s body warms to the same temperature as the humid air and Ray rolls away again in search of coolness, relief.

Ray didn’t plan it, but after the third night he gives up and admits he’s staying with Brad. He brings round underwear and a toothbrush, spare socks and orange juice from Jeff’s place, claims the lefthand chair in Brad’s living room. Brad’s got the better gaming setup anyway.

The days fall into a languid summer pattern, simple and easy. Ray wakes late and tangled in the sheets of Brad’s enormous bed, after Brad comes back from surfing with his body ocean-cold. They fuck til Ray’s shivering and goosepimpled, until Brad’s leeched him of all his sweaty late-morning warmth. They run or spot each other, watch bad action movies together, get some work done on the old bike Brad’s been rebuilding. Ray curls up on the couch and reads while Brad messes around with his computers, and then Brad fucks him and feeds from him again. He’s always hungry.

Brad always keeps some food in his house. Corn chips, frozen pizza, whiskey, beer. He likes Ray flushed and a little drunk, blood rushing close to his skin.

In the daytime Ray drinks water, juice, sports drinks, sometimes tiny droplets of blood off of Brad’s fingertips or direct from Brad’s wrists. He lies back and lets it take him over, senses expanding, body flush with new strength and new hungers. Brad likes to bite him right afterwards. He says he can taste himself in Ray’s blood.

Ray doesn’t get tired. He never says stop.

Most of the platoon is still in California. If Brad visits others sometimes, feeds from Walt or Nate or Gabe or Lilley, spends an hour or two in a cheap unlicensed blood house – Ray never asks, and Brad never tells.

Who needs talking? Brad puts on Barry Manilow CDs in the afternoon sometimes, Ray leans back and bats his eyelashes and tells Brad that they might be going steady, honey, but if he wants Ray to put out he needs to fucking try harder at setting the mood. Brad rolls his eyes and calls Ray a whiny bitch, Ray waits until his back is turned and switches the player over to Willie Nelson. And then Brad swears and pins him to the floor and scrapes his teeth along the side of Ray’s neck until Ray bucks and begs and cries out, better than any foreplay.

Ray loves sex, but nothing he’s ever experienced feels better than getting bitten. And no-one at all is like Brad.

He never wants this to end.

***

They met years ago, in Pendleton. Brad was already a sergeant, golden and untouchable, picking his team for Afghanistan while the rest of the battalion talked about him behind his back. The Iceman, they called him. Climbing mountains, slaying dragons, stronger and better and faster than you.

No-one fucks with him. No-one beats him. No-one gets close enough to touch.

Ray figured him out a year before Brad and the rest came out to the Corps, long before the clusterfuck that was Iraq. Took a crazy person to put it all together, cold skin and inhuman strength and a body that loved the sun and hated it in equal measure. Took a brave one who didn’t care what he sounded like to say the word out loud.

Ray learned about the others later, Poke and Gina, Rudy, Gunny Wynn. He knows how to see them for what they really are now, the unmistakable way they move. After a century or so they get that old, old look in their eyes. These days, after the outing, the Corps has rules in place to regulate how they are fed. But Ray was offering himself to them for years before then, in the darkness, a secret trust.

There’s never been any need for fear. Brad chose him. Brad’s people take care of their own.

Ray remembers the weeks before Iraq, all the new men coming in slow and fearful and ignorant among them. Food supply for the bloodsuckers, no-one said aloud. Expendable. Until the Corps realised that dozens of human soldiers charged up on borrowed blood were far more desirable than a handful of ancient, willful killers.

Their platoon had a camp to themselves, in the desert. Men – and a handful of women – came to them there in that heat, that blazing sun. Not all of them were needed, or wanted.

Ray remembers afternoons out there in the dim stifling heat of the long tents. The smell of close hot bodies, and sweat, and blood. Brad and Gina and Poke lying out there in the sun together, steeling themselves to bear it, motionless in the face of all that light.

A new kid out there with them asking questions, could be any of half a dozen kids. Skinny and nervous, all of them, swaggering around with thin forced bravado.

“You wanna know what we are?” Poke’s voice, slow and cruel. “We’re cold-blooded killers, dawg. Goddamn reptilian motherfuckers. Every last damn thing you’ve heard is true. You think Marines are hard? I am four centuries old and I _will_ fuck your shit up. You wanna keep asking stupid questions?”

Brad smiled thin and knife-sharp. Gina grinned with a sudden flash of teeth.

And the kid turned and ran, all the way back to the coast and the regular Marines and safety. Most of them did. There are only a few who stayed, Nate and Gabe and Walt and Ray himself. It’s not just that they’re the strongest. You’ve got to want things you shouldn’t, to stick around Brad or someone like him. Got to be a little fucked up, got to have hungers.

You could see it as a kindness, the way the old ones drove the scared kids away.

You could see it as patronising, superiority complexes masked as pity. They tried that shit with Ray too, but he’s not looking for someone to treat him like a child. He’s made his choices, and he’s strong enough to bear their consequences. He’s here for Brad. And the others can respect that.

Sometimes Poke tells him about his human past, after he’s fed and Ray is lying dazed and sleepy beside him. Not often. Tells Ray about his childhood in bleak bitter words, all those years as a grown man lit up and fuelled by his anger, until that night he saw a woman like a spirit or a nightmare walking out of the forest toward him. _I’ve been watching you,_ she said. _You’re a fighter, you're like me._ And then she took his hand.

Poke and Gina never looked back.

Hell was the Valley of Mexico, forty years after Cortez.

Rudy and Wynn are younger, Americans both of them, new enough to marvel sometimes at the changes of fifty or a hundred years. Brad was born a continent away, centuries older even than Gina. Remembers mercenaries fighting from the walls of Constantinople, longships sailing down rivers from the west, the fall of a Jewish kingdom in the grass. Brad’s world was so much wider than Ray could have ever imagined.

Like Gina he has forgotten his birth language in the weight of all those years.

But to dwell in the past is to be crushed by it entirely. Brad lives here, today.

Here, with Ray.

***

Sunday afternoons are slow and lazy, sprawling out in an armchair in the golden light while Brad sighs and shuffles paperwork. Ray likes to watch him work, the curve of his shoulders bent over the desk, forearms bare and flecked with little golden hairs. Often Ray falls asleep to the thin scratching sounds of Brad’s pen on the paper.

“You fucking lazy shit,” Brad says casually, and Ray jerks out of his doze.

Ray makes a complaining noise, stretching, and opens his eyes to find Brad watching him. He meets Brad’s eyes steadily, considering. Brad’s blood ratchets up his libido as well as his senses, his physical abilities. But sometimes waiting is worth it anyway.

Sometimes it’s not. Ray’s never been very good with patience.

So even when Brad shakes his head and looks away Ray smiles and knows it won’t be long.

“Yeah, whatever, fucknuts. Don’t take it out on your pal over here, all that shit you’re doing is your own fucking fault. Hey, remember when you thought getting this promotion was a good idea? Oooh, Iceman, shuffling paperwork around like a little bitch! Sounds like an awesome time.”

“Shut your miserable buck-tooth mouth,” Brad says peaceably. He flips Ray the bird, turns back to his work.

Ray thinks about getting his hand between his legs, unzipping his jeans just far enough to get his cock out. Stroking himself slowly, languid, watching Brad’s back stiffen and tense.

Brad will know exactly what he’s doing, know his scent and his speeding heartrate and the tiny wet noises he’ll make. He’s so sensitive and so gorgeous with it, missing nothing. So easy to tease.

He hears Brad let out his breath in a noisy sigh. Brad’s still not looking at him. But Ray knows that even his changing heartbeat is enough to give his sudden arousal away.

“No,” Brad says flatly. Ray grins.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ray says innocently, stretching again. So easy to let one hand fall into his lap, to rock up against his palm just for one sweet second.

“Don’t be a shit. I’ve got to get this done for tomorrow.” Brad glances at him once and then away, almost too quick to catch. “Save it, Person. I’ll make it worth your while tonight.”

“The fuck did you wake me up for then?” Ray sighs theatrically. He lowers his lashes and his voice, lets it come out warm and throaty. “All talk and no action, huh, Brad? Paperpushing lifestyle is getting to you.” Ray smiles a little, teasing. “You know I’m not down with that delayed gratification shit. C’mon, Brad.”

“You’re a fucking needy little shit with a two-second attention span.”

Ray scoffs a little. “Whatever, homes, I know you love the MTV generation.” Ray sucks on his lower lip, bites down hard, feeling the tiny dull pain of it and then the flesh swelling and thickening with blood.

Brad glances at him again, just as quickly as before. Ray could almost smile at how fast he’s weakening. Brad’s probably hungry again though. Hasn’t fed since the night before.

“Just shut the fuck up, Person, and let me work.”

Ray snorts. “Don’t fuck with me, Brad. I know you want it just as bad as I do. Or do you really wanna fill out that shit in triplicate with a hard-on all afternoon?”

He licks his lips, more than halfway to hard now, watching Brad shift uncomfortably in place.

“I could go in the bedroom and jerk off, homes,” Ray offers, all fake concern. “Wouldn’t be too distracting, right? I’m pretty fucking horny, you wouldn’t have to hear me moaning for long. And it’s not like you could smell it from there or anything… oh, wait!”

Brad sighs again loud and exasperated, shaking his head. Ray grins in triumph; he knows that means surrender.

“Shut the fuck up or come suck my cock,” Brad amends finally, and at the hunger in his tone Ray has to drop his hand to his lap again, press down for just a second against his aching cock.

He gets up slowly, stretching and taking his time, while Brad spreads his legs under the table and glares at the pages with more than the usual level of ferocity. Ray smiles as he ducks his head to crawl.

There’s no humiliation in this. In these familiar motions, fitting himself between Brad’s spread legs, feeling tight muscle quiver under his hands as he slowly works down the zip of Brad’s jeans. He’s trapped under the wooden table, caught between Brad’s broad legs, musk and muscle and the crinkled hairs under his palms. It’s a game to play at submission like this, when Brad is the one who’s yielded. No shame in it now or ever, only pleasure and a sweet sense of power.

Brad moans for him like a human man, trembles with pleasure like a human man, fists his hands in Ray’s hair helplessly, out of control. Ray can take him to pieces like this, working up from light teasing to a relentless rhythm that has Brad right on the brink, before he stops and slows down and draws him back down from the edge again. Brad moans and whines low in the back of his throat, but he never pushes, never forces. There are limits and rules to everything. Brad is, physically, so much stronger. And Ray likes to be overpowered by him – sometimes, when he chooses.

Sometimes he chooses to be in charge. Chooses what he will do to Brad, chooses when Brad gets to come. Chooses to make Brad sob and moan and beg, just like this.

When Ray decides on that Brad abides by it, always.

Brad _likes_ it.

Brad likes what’s happening right now, the way Ray’s drawing this out so long. Ray’s enjoying it too, the weight and heft of Brad’s cock in his mouth, the taste, the feel of the smooth sensitive skin bumping against the roof of his mouth. The thrill of the position they’re in, the little noises Brad is making. Ray’s cock gone so stiff and hard inside his jeans.

They’re both getting close now. Ray drops his hand between his legs and strokes himself, carefully easing his cock out of his jeans. He closes his eyes and sucks on Brad harder, touches himself faster, comes into his hand just like that. Brad’s all around him.

Brad moans again when Ray comes, thrusts deep in Ray’s mouth. He always knows when it’s happened, and it always turns him on.

Ray can feel Brad’s thighs shaking again under his palms. Brad curves his back and bends down low, slumping down, and Ray reaches up past the table edge for Brad’s face with his wet right hand.

Brad moans again, a low guttural animal noise. Licks over Ray’s fingers, sucks a little, and then he bites down hard on the vein in Ray’s wrist.

He comes with his cock in Ray’s mouth and his mouth on Ray’s wrist, and Ray cries out again in doubled, mirrored pleasure as intense as a second orgasm. Afterwards they rest for a long time like that, Ray on his knees with his head in Brad’s lap.

On his knees, while Brad sips blood from the wound on Ray’s wrist.

***

Later Ray sits down beside Brad again, drinking in long pulls from a full bottle of water.

Brad’s clean and put together again now. Head down, low and steady, as he works. He still turns his head to smile at Ray.

“You tired?” he asks, resting his fingers against Ray’s wrist. “Keep drinking. I know I took a lot.” His voice is clipped and stern, but Ray can recognise the concern in it.

Ray smiles slowly. “Nah, I’m fine,” he says, voice coming out lazy and satisfied. “I’m all up on your blood, homes. Fuckin’ superpowered right now. You don’t need to worry.”

Brad snorts, the tenseness in his face smoothing out. “Yeah, I’d like to see _you_ saving the world in spandex.”

Ray raises his eyebrows, keeping a straight face. “ _Spandex_ , Colbert, really? You into that? Cause you know I would do that for you, your Ray-Ray rolls with _any_ kind of kinky shit. You just gotta say the word!” He glances at Brad, judging his reaction. “Hey homes, we could even get matching costumes! I’ll be the dark, brooding, creepy one, and you can be my Robin.”

Brad rolls his eyes. “Shut the fuck up and let me work, you little freak. Christ.”

Ray lets his eyes open wide, face all exaggerated hurt. He loves this, messing with Brad like this, trying to find things that will make the edges of Brad’s mouth turn up into one of those brief secret smiles. He loves that Brad loves it too.

Then Ray’s eyes drop to the page on the edge of the desk, to the string of names there. All play falls away.

“The fuck is this, Colbert,” he says slowly, trying to figure it out. The list is full of familiar names, Chaffin, Hasser, Garza printed in neat columns down the page.

Brad meets his eyes steadily. “Reassignments. It’s time, Ray. Corps doesn’t want regular humans spending more than a year or two in our platoons.”

“They wanna get as many of us as they can powered up on your blood, yeah, I know that shit. They don’t want us getting too close to you.” Ray bites his lip and looks away. The math is too easy. Ray’s been on Brad’s team longer than any other human. “Why isn’t my name on there?”

Brad looks over to one side, mouth tensing in a familiar line. Ray recognises the stiff line of his jaw; Brad’s struggling for the right words, for any words.

“You’re the best RTO I’ve ever had,” Brad says finally. “We work well together. I don’t want to ruin that.”

Ray just looks at him.

“Bullshit,” he says, flat and cold. He feels – god, he doesn’t know _what_ he feels. Brad wants him, yeah, he knows that. But this? “You’re _fucking_ me, Brad. Corps doesn’t want to know anything about the shit you do, but if we were regular guys we’d be breaking fifty different regs. You need me to remind you?”

“I’m _not_ a regular fucking soldier, the Corps doesn’t know _shit_ about the way we work,” Brad snaps out immediately, eyes furious and blue.

“Homes…”

Brad shakes his head, mouth a cold hard line. “You want me to move you out of here?” he says, furiously. “You _want_ to leave?”

Ray sighs and slowly shakes his head into a no. Yeah, that’s a question with an easy answer. Brad’s shoulders are a taut line, back stiff and hurting. What the fuck is Ray going to do? _Leave_ him? Go back to a regular platoon, toe the party line, pretend that the Corps can put humans and vampires in the shit together and have it end up in any other place than this? It’s not just the fucking, though Ray and Brad are hardly the only ones. Don’t ask, don’t tell was doomed the moment the first okay was given for Brad to sink his fangs into a Marine’s throat. Feeding and desire and caring, _wanting_ ; it’s a tangled mess and none of them, not even Brad, can escape it. The sex is just an afterthought to _this_ ; this intimacy, this bone-deep knowledge, the shared blood flowing through their veins.

You can take blood, give blood, to a stranger. But by the time you’re done you won’t be strangers anymore.

“No,” Ray says, finally. “You know I’ll always stay with you. As long as I can. But fuck, Brad, you know we won’t get away with it forever.”

Brad looks away. And doesn’t answer.

***

Three nights later Ray comes home late from a bar night with the guys, drunk and swaying, wreathed in cigarette smoke. Brad’s waiting there by the door in darkness.

Ray smiles when he sees him, leans in for a kiss. Tilts his mouth and his neck and his whole body up to Brad, all of him open, yielding, wanting.

Brad’s hands land on Ray’s shoulders to hold him firm and steady, but he doesn’t lean in, doesn’t take what’s being offered.

Ray sways a little in his grasp, still smiling, eyes dark and hooded. Arousal pounding through his body and his blood.

“I want to feel your cock hit the back of my throat,” Ray says, shaping each word carefully. “Wanna suck you, get you nice and sloppy and wet, then pull off and turn around and feel you sink straight in me til I scream. Want your cock in me, and your teeth in me. Split me right the fuck open, Brad. I know you can smell how bad I want it.”

Brad makes a low noise in the back of his throat. Ray hears it, feels Brad’s hands tightening and digging into skin.

Just for a moment Brad’s bending down towards him, obeying helplessly, but then he freezes.

“Who else had you tonight,” he says, voice distorted with lust and anger. “Fuck you, I can _smell_ it all over you. Who the fuck put their teeth in you?”

Ray smiles lazily as he hooks his hands around Brad’s neck. “Aw, you jealous, baby? It was only Poke. He was hungry so I let him have a bit, just a little suck. He’s your buddy, aren’t you down with sharing? You always used to share with your buddies, Brad.”

A lot of people feed from Ray, but Brad’s the only one he fucks, and that’s always been enough for both of them. Nothing should have changed.

Brad’s teeth are out. Ray can see it even in the dim light.

“No. Not _you_ ,” Brad snarls, and then there’s silence.

They stand like that for a while, still. It’s not like Brad to linger like this. But Ray’s a little drunk, and he’s been waiting all night. Been _wanting_ all night. There’s no time for fucking psychoanalysis right now. In a few minutes Brad will snap out of it and they’ll bicker a little, fuck. And in the morning Ray will wake up smiling and unbelieving at this, at Brad beside him and this perfect life.

Then Brad bends his head low, mouth against Ray’s ear. Ray’s shivering and leaning into it when Brad speaks. “Get out,” he says slowly, deliberately, and shoves Ray away.

Ray catches himself badly on the back of the couch, mind gone blank with shock. His mouth starts to open, shaping a furious word.

He’s never seen Brad act like this before. He’s angry, and he doesn’t _understand_.

“The other day… you were fucking right for once, Person,” Brad says. “I fucked up. Having you here like this, spending all this time with you… I didn’t think. I just wanted to be around you.”

Ray’s gone so quiet, all the words gone. From a distant place he hears Brad suck in a shaky breath. He knows Brad doesn’t need to breathe.

“I want you so badly,” Brad says finally, so quiet, in a whisper that barely makes it out of his throat. “Can’t share you, can’t lose you. Ray… Ray, I want to turn you.”

Ray feels every nerve in his body light up.

His heartbeat is pounding in his ears. He knows Brad can hear it, knows he can smell the sweat springing up on his palms and chest and back. Smell his cock, still stiff and hard between his legs.

“You said I was safe,” he says, through thick mouth and clumsy tongue. “You said… you said you wouldn’t do it unless I asked. Not for years, not until you had to...”

“Yeah,” Brad answers harshly. “And now I’m saying that if you stay I’ll turn you. Tonight.”

Ray’s silent. Can’t think, can’t breathe.

“You’re everywhere, all over my territory. I can hear you, feel you, smell you, all the time… and then you come in here, trying to make me _jealous_? The fuck were you thinking, Person.” Brad’s so inhumanly still, only his lips moving. His lips and those blue, blue eyes, focused so intently on Ray. That gaze burning him up. “And it’s you. You know how I… it’s _you_.”

Ray shakes his head back and forth, denial. The anger finally starting, brain clicking into gear; but there’s understanding as well. And an old hunger, a different kind of want.

“Gonna try and blame your biology for this one, Brad? Because that’s fucking _bullshit_. All that ‘gonna die of blue balls’ crap, you’re trying that on me? I know you’re feeling shit that’s hard to deal with, and I’m sorry, but Jesus fucking Christ, homes, you’re not a fucking animal. Don’t act like one.”

Brad looks at him, face still and cold, alien. “We’re both animals. You’re prey.”

Ray’s still for just a moment. And then he moves again, suddenly smiling, rolling his eyes so hard they almost hurt. “Yeah, whatever, Edward. Enough with the emo teenage bullshit, _God_. How old are you again?” His heart’s still pounding, but he feels so calm.

“Such a fucking martyr, I don’t know why I put up with you,” he says. “You tried asking me, Brad? Pretty sure that was the arrangement.”

Brad’s shaking his head, looking away, but Ray walks over to him, cups Brad’s chin in his hands and tugs it down until Brad meets his eyes.

“Brad,” he says slowly, fondly. “I know exactly what you are. I’ve been saying yes to you since I was nineteen years old. You think I didn’t know we’d end up like this? You think I didn’t _want_ us to end up like this?”

Brad’s still in the way that only someone like him can be.

“No,” he says slowly, precisely. “You’re not thinking straight. Don’t you fucking understand what I want from you? What I want to _do_ to you? You need to leave.”

“Blah, blah, fucking blah, Brad. You tried actually listening to the words coming out of my mouth?” Ray’s grinning now, light-headed; he feels totally sober, in control. “Enough with the act. You know I love that dominant alpha shit, turns me on like crazy when you act all jealous and possessive on my ass. So why the fuck are you doing it, if you really wanna scare me away? Try a little harder, Colbert.” Ray leans up, kisses Brad quickly with just the barest slip of tongue.

Ray can hear Brad breathing again, quick and irregular. Like even after so many hundred years, his body still keeps forgetting that it doesn’t need to.

Ray draws in a deep breath of his own, steady, careful. His heart’s pounding, but he isn’t scared. Something warm and enormous swelling in his chest as he thinks back to what Brad’s been saying. He knows he isn’t wrong.

“You said, ‘and it’s you’. Before. You said that. What is it about me, Brad? There’s half a dozen guys you feed from all the time. Gabe, Walt, Jason… I don’t see you getting jealous about any of them, don’t see you trying to turn them.” He smiles a little, tries to make his words come out lightly. “You trying to say I’m special, Brad?”

Brad looks at him. And then suddenly he’s smiling, wide and bright. “Dumb messed-up little whiskey tango shit,” he says, soft and so fond. “You want romance, huh? Want to hear how I really feel?”

Ray grins right back at him, almost giddy. It’s gonna be okay. “Don’t strain yourself. Hey, your momma showed me her Mills and Boon when I was fucking her last night, homes, I got some pro tips if you want them.”

Brad actually laughs out loud. “My mother lived in a hut, Ray. She kept goats. She couldn’t _read_ , and yet she was still smarter and classier than you.”

Ray snorts, light-hearted and relieved. “Yeah homes, that’s what I said. Real classy lady, your mom. _Real_ classy.” He winks enormously, over the top.

Brad shakes his head. “Dumb little hick,” he says again, smiling so wide he can barely get the words out.

Then Brad’s pulling Ray into him finally, close and tight. Says Ray’s name and something else in another language, softly, and kisses Ray on the mouth.

“I do care about you, you know. All of that stuff,” he confesses softly, against the top of Ray’s head.

“Yeah Brad,” Ray whispers back. “I know.”

Ray lets Brad take his weight and breathes in deep. Body alive and thrumming with possibility.

“You can ask me again in the morning if you’d like,” he says finally, against Brad’s collarbone, against Brad’s skin. His heart isn’t beating. But Brad still thinks, and speaks, and moves, and feels. He’s every bit as alive as Ray. “But the answer’s yes.”

“I don’t care when you wanna do it, Brad. Answer's always gonna be yes.”


End file.
